Up, Up and Away: Teens Feel Pinch of High Gas Prices

By HANNAH KIVI
RIVERSIDE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
High gas prices don’t only affect adults, they affect teens, too.
“It’s ridiculous,” 19-year-old Ashley Groff says of today’s fuel costs. “My whole check goes to bills and gas.”
The Eisenhower High School graduate works part-time at Baskin-Robbins and often carpools with friends to save money and gas. She says it irritates her when she sees one person driving alone in a car.
“If you are going to the same place, might as well go together,” she says.
Some teenagers are opting to use other types of transportation, such as carpooling, riding bikes or taking the bus, to save money and gas.
Sixteen-year-old Onasis Gatica, a junior at West Valley High School, says she’s been riding her bike or carpooling to the car wash where she works.
Twenty-year-old Jeffrey Cadousteau, an Eisenhower graduate who works at Streamline Shaved Ice, uses his longboard. He also rides it around Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he goes to school, and often carpools with his friends.
“I save a lot of money,” he says.
Sixteen-year-old Teddy Jones, a West Valley sophomore, says his parents pay for his gas now, but he might soon have to start paying for it himself.
“I’m not really looking forward to it,” he says. “I will probably have to work more hours.”
“We have to conserve as much as we can,” he says.
Gas prices have fallen since the beginning of July. But the state average is still about a dollar more than it was last year. The average in the state for 2007 was about $3.09, according to www.washingtongasprices.com. For July 30 of this year, it was $4.16.
With the rise of gas prices, teen cruising has decreased in parts of the country, according to www.treehugger.com.
According to the Web site, “America’s youth are being forced to seek out other forms of entertainment, such as hanging out in parking lots, malls or movie theaters, and parking their cars and walking around.”
But around here, Capt. Jeff Schneider of the Yakima Police Department says he hasn’t noticed a change in the Yakima Valley’s teen cruising.
“We don’t see cruising like it was 20 years ago,” he says. “But with the gas prices, there hasn’t really been a change.”

High Gas Prices Mean Fewer Trips to Town for Bickleton Teens

By JESSICA CUMMINGS
BICKLETON HIGH SCHOOL
BICKLETON — Sixteen-year-old Junior Hernandez works six days a week at grain elevators in Roosevelt, about 25 miles south of here.
To save money, the Bickleton High School junior has been carpooling to work this summer.
High gas prices, he says, “made me broke, made me think a second about what I’m going to do, and where I’m going to work.”
Across the country, consumers of all ages have been noticing the high gas prices. In larger cities and towns, people can opt to take public transportation. They also don’t have as far to go for groceries and entertainment.
But for those who live in rural areas like Bickleton and have to drive about 40 minutes to get to a town of notable size, high gas prices pose a greater hardship. Here, it’s difficult to avoid spending a lot more money on gas — for fun as well as necessities.
“If we’re going to go to town to have fun, we make it a trip that’s going to benefit us by going grocery shopping or on parts runs,” says 16-year-old Morgan McBride, a junior at Bickleton High School.
Like many Bickleton teens, she says her family has been trying to conserve, cutting back on trips to Sunnyside, Yakima and the Tri-Cities. McBride estimates her family goes to town once every two weeks.
The price of gas “makes me think twice about going to the movies and visiting family or going swimming or camping,” Hernandez says.
Bickleton doesn’t have a movie theater or a large shopping center.
“When we make trips to town we think of other stuff we have to do and we stock up for at least two weeks,” says Holly Goodnight, a 15-year-old junior at Bickleton High School.
Tricia McBride, a 17-year-old senior at Bickleton High School, lives in Alderdale, about 25 miles southeast of Bickleton. The upcoming school year, she says, is going to be “harder” because of high gas prices.
“Going to school is going to be super-expensive,” says McBride, who estimates she spends about $100 a week on gas.
“I get a lot of pressure not to go out and do things,” she says. “I used to go to the Tri-Cities to shop, and now I go closer” to home.
The same goes for Hernandez, who says he watches “what else I buy because I know I have to spend so much every week on gas.”